As election season nears, efforts to upgrade voting machines bog down

"The American voting public has really gone full circle on this issue," says Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, which has been tracking election reform. "After 2000, where people wanted to eliminate the need for paper and punch cards and older systems they felt weren't reliable. Then in the past few years there is growing concern with electronic systems. Federal and state officials are caught in the middle trying to address all these concerns."

A California think tank called the state's mandate for paper records of all ballots one of the top 10 policy blunders of 2005.

"Passing sweeping laws ... to require voter-verified paper trails for touch-screen machines, though well intentioned, could bankrupt cash-strapped counties and may erode the efficiency of electronic voting management," says Vince Vasquez, who coauthored the briefing paper for the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.

Part of the growing cost comes because the state must purchase machines that meet both the paper trail and disability requirements. Some questions are still unanswered including how blind people can verify that a piece of paper has correctly recorded their electronic votes.

"As a nation we are in a very difficult situation right now because states and counties have had ample time to comply with HAVA laws but are being hindered by VVPAT requirements," says Dan Tokaji, a political scientist at Ohio State University who has been tracking US election reform. "At the moment, it is very difficult if not impossible to comply with VVPAT and the disability requirements given the existing state of technology."

Academics, computer science associations, and others have argued that a voter verification paper trail is necessary because public trust in the vote-count systems is paramount for a return to more participation in elections.

"Imagine the scenario where as a voter you choose candidate A, but the machine scores it for candidate B and yet displays a vote for A," says David Dill founder of VerifiedVoting.org. "If you try to recount it later without any paper verification, the machine will keep telling you the same thing over and over."

In the meantime, California state and county officials are trying to assure that the June election can go forward.

"We are still waiting to receive many machines that are in federal testing," says secretary of State spokeswoman Jennifer Kerns. Two models - the ESNS Unison and the Sequoia Edge System - will need another 55 days of state testing.

The window for election planning gets smaller every day. Only after the machines pass inspection can they be purchased and allotted to county personnel, who carry out elections.

If states are not in compliance with the federal law, it is unclear what comes next, says Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org.

The US Department of Justice could extend the deadline but would likely not leave it open- ended.

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